Reviews – Page 120

Review of The Red Panda Adventures – Season 1

SFFaudio Audiobook Review

The Red Panda Adventures – Season One
By Gregg Taylor; Performed by a FULL CAST
12 MP3 Files – Approx. 5.5 Hours [AUDIO DRAMA]
Publisher: DecoderRingTheatre.com / Podiobooks.com
Published: 2005/2006
Themes: / Fantasy / Superheroes / Supervillains / 1930s / Toronto / Secret Identities / Hypnotism /

Flying Squirrel: “We could have two super-power’d loons on our hands.” -Episode 11: Duality

Masks, grapple-guns, static boots, retractable membranes, ring-radios? Check. Supervillains with names like The Golden Claw, The Electric Eel and Diablo? Check. Okay then, tune your podcatcher to ‘pure pulp’ and break out the hockey organ because The Red Panda Adventures – Season One is ready to glide into justice. This first 12 episode season is full of flying kung fu fists, mesmerizing hypnosis, snappy dialog and mystery. Most memorable for me are the characters and the dialogue. Plot lines are reminiscent of comic-book and radio serials from yesteryear but the parlance is all modernistic as filtered through a roaring-twenties speech pattern paradigm. Episode 2: Night Mission and Episode: 7 Red Panda Wanted Dead Or Alive stood-out because these episodes highlighted the interaction between the love-blind hero, Red Panda, and his adoring sidekick The Flying Squirrel. The Panda’s superpowers are a cross between those of The Green Hornet and The Shadow. He’s a master hypnotist, able to cloud the minds of villains. Other fun aspects are the introduction of other superheroes and superhero groups, in a way the whole show reminds me of animated version of The Tick if it were played slightly straighter.

The Red Panda Adventures – Season One is a super-fun diversion delivered in delicious half-hour doses. The only thing better than the production of this fab audio drama series is the vocal talent. I get endless kicks out of the sexual tension between the oblivious Red Panda and his pining sidekick/driver Kit Baxter. Their city, 1930s Toronto, is quieter than many other audio dramas, I hear less foley and fewer sound effects, I like that they aren’t obsessed with putting in the sound of footsteps in every scene – it usually isn’t necessary. Also nice is that from episode one of this series this show really works. This is probably because of the experience gained during the previous Red Panda incarnation (a six episode series set during WWII). Season Two is already underway and I look forward to devouring it too.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of American Gods by Neil Gaiman

SFFaudio Audiobook Review

American Gods
By Neil Gaiman, read by George Guidall
2 MP3-CD’s/20 hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Harper Audio
Published: 2001
ISBN: 060836253
Themes: / Fantasy / Modern fantasy / Mythology / Legend / Americana / Picaresque / Gods /

A storm is coming. From his prison cell, Shadow can feel it bearing down on him, but he has no idea how it shred his already tattered life and cast the pieces into realms both familiar and mythical.

Shadow’s journey across the real and imagined terrain of America is the gravitational mass around which the rest of the novel accretes. We follow him out of prison, to a portentous meeting with his eventual employer Mr. Wednesday, back to his home town, and beyond to a magical carousel in a bizarre roadside attraction, to a small Wisconsin town peopled by a hundred unique, quirky characters, down to little Egypt, across a barren Indian reservation, and even to the geometric center of the contiguous states. His discoveries of the languishing deities brought to this continent and abandoned by assimilating immigrants are our own, and the questions he faces about the nature of human faith and the fulfillment of ourselves in mystical sacrifices are questions we find ourselves struggling to answer.

But Shadow’s story is not the only one. The mercurial Mr. Wednesday also has a tale to tell, as do a half-dozen or so other deities, spirits, leprechauns, and phantasms. Their stories are tough, tender, tragic, uplifting, and ultimately doomed. But even they are not the full measure of this book. There are also newly-minted gods of television, computers, covert operations, and other creations of modern angst. They represent a malevolent opposition to the old gods, and the storm Shadow has foreseen is the clash between the old and new gods in a battle for the devotion of an attention-deficit populace.

American Gods is one of the great novels of modern fantasy, and lands just short of the fence as a great American novel. Much of its power is derived from its complexity: It is composed of religion, adventure, a small-town thriller, a road novel, history, con-games, Native American myth, early American legend, intimate portraits of immigrants finding their small way in a huge new country, and sprawling adventure across the entire face of America. Written by an imported Englishman, it offers both an outsider’s attention to quirky detail and a native’s casual acceptance of all that comprises this slow-simmered stew of a country. Gaiman’s prose is graceful, simple, and his pacing is slow enough to nurture our sympathy, yet brisk enough to remain consistently exciting.

George Guidall’s narration is also excellent. His portrayals are groaning, snippy, kvetching and distinct. He conjures a pantheon of note-perfect Eastern European accents for a group of little-known gods, a crisp con-man’s coarseness for Mr. Wednesday, a mischievous African charm for Anansi, and a quiet desperation for Shadow. The only misstep is Shadow’s wife Laura, whose voice seems too fawningly girlish for the part. The MP3 CD format is the best so far invented, and the sound quality is crisp. Maybe too crisp, as you can clearly hear the edges of many of the edits.

After the multi-threaded end of the story, there is an extended interview with Gaiman which provides a delightful look at the man and the origins of his story. While I found it fascinating to see how such a large collection of ideas coalesced into a single transcendent work, the interview also rubs off just a little of the luster. Overall, though, the entire production is a pleasure from the first ominous chapter to the last. It will make an enviable centerpiece to your audio fiction collection.

Posted by Kurt Dietz

Review of Cheater by Orson Scott Card

SFFaudio Audiobook Review

Cheater
By Orson Scott Card; Read by Orson Scott Card
1 MP3 File – 33 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show
Published: October 2006
ISBN: None

Han Tzu was the bright and shining hope of his family. He wore a monitor embedded in the back of his skull, near the top of his spine.

A brand new story from the Ender universe. This story is an audio bonus in the current issue of Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show (issue #3). Han Tzu was a minor character in the SFFaudio Essential Ender’s Game, like previous audio entries in the Enderverse of late, this is a tale that ‘fills up the corners’ (as the Hobbits say) giving a backstory to the character nicknamed “Hot Soup.” Fans of the Enderverse will remember that Han Tzu was one of Ender’s toon leaders while he was in Dragon Army during the original novel Ender’s Game. Han Tzu later plays a more prominent role in the novels Shadow Puppets and Shadow Of The Giant. Here though, we meet him younger than anywhere prior in an interesting morality tale about Han Tzu and the circumstances of his admission to Battle School. His mother, who Han Tzu rarely gets to see, is a brilliant scientist. His father is one of the wealthiest men in China, a descendant of a famous Chinese family, and a businessman with long term plans for his son. Poor Han Tzu is never allowed to leave the confines of his father’s estate. Instead, the nation’s finest tutors are brought there to teach him, and even the few friends he gets to play with have been specially chosen, and likely been paid to be his friend. This has all been in an effort to mould him into a man capable of being the next Emperor of China. He might even get that chance, despite his father’s plans.

Though I can’t say I agree with his politics, I cannot dispute the power Orson Scott Card’s writing. This man knows how to tell a story and make you sympathize and love his wonderous worlds. Cheater is only tangentially related to Science Fiction; nothing SF happens in the story that hadn’t happend in Ender’s Game. That said, if you’ve read and liked other stories in the Enderverse you’ll want to hear this story. Like in Ender’s Shadow, spending more time with individuals of Ender’s jeesh (an inner circle or group of close friends) is a special treat. If Card wanted to record one of these tales for the next half-dozen issues of Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show I’d listen, and be eager to hear them. Card recorded this story in a relatively good sounding environment, but there is a noticeable hiss of white noise that follows his reading from start to finish. As to his performance, like a surprisingly high number of author/narrators, Card reads his own work very well though I imagine Stefan Rudnicki’s performance would have been even better.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Antibodies by Charles Stross

SFFaudio Audiobook Review

Antibodies
By Charles Stross; Read by Jared Doreck and Shondra Marie
1 CD – 54 Minutes 16 Seconds [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Infinivox
Published: 2005
ISBN: 1884612474
Themes: / Science Fiction / Singularity / Conspiracy / Artificial Intelligence / Parallel Worlds /

– Click HERE to hear a sample –

“Damn it, Bob, I really had high hopes for this world-line. They seemed to be doing so well for a revelatory Christian-Islamic line, despite the post-Enlightenment mind-set.”

The announcement of the solution to the traveling salesman problem heralds the imminent destruction of humanity. No more salesman; no more problem. The story begins when a computer programmer is notified by RSS feed that all NP-complete problems lie in P, and thus computer encryption is forever compromised. Knowing the disaster for what it is, he flees, but with this being such a hard-takeoff he might not make it.

Stross’ ideas are hard, cold, pure, and funny, but it is his storytelling – the effectiveness of the complete tale – that elevates his perspective SF ideas into Science Fiction excellence. This is the kind of fiction I love; thought provoking with shrewdly surprisingly but necessary consequences of the premise. Stross goes from alpha to omega faster than you can guess, and in so doing delivers a solid entry into SF’s growing dialogue about The Singularity. Antibodies reminded of Isaac Asimov’s similarily elegant short story Living Space. Also refreshing is a humourous conspiracy that explains why Microsoft Windows-based computer viruses are so prevalent.

Allan Kaster, who runs the Infinivox wing of Audiotext, has put deep thought into this tale’s production. The narrators, Jared Dorek and Shondra Marie, pair up to deliver the action in this first-person perspective masterpiece of SF. Marie reads all the female voices and Dorek all the male. When each speaks the role of the hero and heroine, they do so in an amalgamated accent that is implied by the text. The production is carefully woven with transition music designed to show textual scene transitions and time passing. But it is the story that elevates this audiobook to SFFaudio Essential status. With a running time just shy of one hour you aren’t likely to have a more quintissential Strossian experience on audio.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Superman Returns by Marv Wolfman

SFFaudio Audiobook Review

Superman Returns
By Marv Wolfman; Read by Scott Brick
8 CDs – 9.5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2006
ISBN: 0786145455 (Cassette), 0786171332 (CD), 0786175729 (MP3-CD)
Click here for audio sample.

A review by Jake Black

I loved Superman Returns. I saw the film several times in theaters in both the 3-D and regular versions. It was a tremendous film, and as a die-hard Superman fan (and one who has worked with Smallville and even a Superman Returns book in the UK) I admit a bias. I wanted the movie to succeed. And to me, it did. It was with a similar view that I listened to the Superman Returns audiobook. I wanted it to succeed, and I think it does. It is a very different experience listening to the book than I was anticipating, but that is not necessarily bad.

The audio book is a dramatic reading of the film’s novelization by Marv Wolfman. The reading by Scott Brick is well done. Brick’s voice is pleasing, adding the right mix of excitement and simple narration, providing a colorful read. I was surprised that there were no sound effects or music to augment the reading, but that doesn’t detract from the quality of the audio book. (This is how much of a geek I am, though, I used a second CD player to play segments of the films soundtrack while I listened to each scene…okay, I didn’t really, but I *did* consider it!)

The great strength of the book is Wolfman’s passion for the character. A writer on several DC Comics books over the years, Wolfman has a vast knowledge of the Man of Steel. Utilizing this knowledge, the book ties in to many tellings of the Superman mythos. He does a fine job filling in gaps that better tied the film into the first two Christopher Reeve movies. (This was an unofficial sequel to those films, and Wolfman makes that much more clear.)

Make no mistake, though, a reader looking to relive the movie will find many things different in the novel than the film itself. Based on the script and story by Bryan Singer, Michael Dougherty, and Dan Harris, the book includes several scenes cut from the film, like Kal-El’s trip to Krypton told only through a bump in the movie. A lot of time is told telling that part of the story in the book, and it helps listeners understand better his motivation upon his return to Earth. Also explained more in-depth is the relationship between Martha and Ben Hubbard. It is a wonderful dynamic that I think could have added a lot to the film.

Missing from the book is the story about Jason and his super-parentage. Since it was based on the script, and those portions were not distributed with the script itself, it is understandable why this element would not be included. This is especially the case when one considers the books (including this audio version) were released prior to the film. Even the official merchandise tries to avoid spoilers!

Again, I admit a bias here. I wanted this to succeed. I think all in all it did. I would’ve liked some music on the book, but that is such a minor point, it’s almost not worth mentioning. So let’s pretend I didn’t. If you want to remember the film, and learn a lot more about the characters, this audiobook is a perfect addition your collection. (8 Compact Discs, nearly 10 hours of material.)

Jake Black is a writer based in Utah. Credits include comics, books, magazines, and much more. Visit www.jakeblack.com for more.

Review of Star Trek: Vulcan’s Soul: Exodus by Sherman and Shwartz

Science Fiction Audiobook Review

Star Trek: Vulcan’s Soul: Exodus
By Josepha Sherman and Susan Shwartz; Read by Richard Poe
6 Cassettes – 8.5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Recorded Books
Published: 2005
ISBN: 141930920X
Themes: / Science Fiction / Star Trek / Vulcans /

I have read the previous works by Josepha Sherman and Susan Shwartz, titled Star Trek: Vulcan’s Forge and Star Trek: Vulcan’s Heart, and both were excellent. Star Trek: Vulcan’s Soul: Exodus is no different. All are excellent meditations on what it means to be Vulcan, and Exodus delves into the planet’s history, back to the time of Surak, the Vulcan who guided his race into suppressing their emotions and adhering to logic. The main focus of this novel is a group of Vulcans who are preparing to leave the planet. These people eventually become the Romulans, and their story will continue into the next books, titled Exiles and Epiphany. Plus, a story that takes place in the 24th Century after the Dominion War, where the Romulan homeworlds are threatened by the alien Watraii. Spock and his wife Saavik, as well as centenarian Admirals Uhura and Chekov, assemble a fleet of Federation, Klingon and
Romulan ships, against Starfleet orders, to deal with them. (I guess if McCoy can still be alive to take a tour of the Enterprise-D 100+ years after his first tour as Kirk’s chief medical officer, then I guess Uhura and Chekov can still be alive after the Dominion War.)

I also like the addition and update of another Original Series character, The Romulan Commander from “The Enterprise Incident”, and I’m pleased to see she’s finally been given a name: Charvonek.

The audiobook is read by Richard Poe(who played Gul Evek in several episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager). You’d think that his deep, distinctive voice would make it hard to give voice to the women in his story, but he manages admirably. He also does well at giving emotion to the characters, applying just the right anger and sadness, and even adding breathlessness to fight scenes. I can’t wait to hear the next book.

Ed. – This audiobook is the first Unabridged Star Trek novel we’ve come across. Recorded Books has very recently published an Unabridged version of the second book in the series, Star Trek: Vulcan’s Soul: Exiles, also read by Richard Poe.

posted by Scott A.